And in Bergen, Add Anger at School-Aid Loss

By ROBERT HANLEY

Published: October 28, 1990

HACKENSAC—
THE $2.8 billion tax increase Gov. Jim Florio whipped through the Legislature in June has cast a long shadow over the contest for Bergen County executive.

The candidates, Jeremiah F. O'Connor, a Democrat, and William P. Schuber, a Republican, have scrambled for weeks to capitalize on the deep voter hostility to the taxes and the millions of dollars Bergen's schools will lose under the state's revised school-aid formula. In debates, television and radio ads, and fliers, each has extolled efficiency in government, trumpeted his own budgetcutting plan, and painted the other as having willingly raised taxes in the past.

These themes have dominated the campaign to run the $320 million government of the state's most populated county and detracted from talk about major issues facing the county in the 1990's.

On many of them, Mr. O'Connor and Mr. Schuber agree. Both favor open space and regionalization of municipal services like road repair, firefighting and public works. Both oppose construction of the $400 million incinerator for garbage from Bergen's 70 towns and the $1 billion tunnel proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers to divert flood waters from the Pompton and Passaic Rivers in Wayne to the lower Hackensack River and Newark Bay.

In recent interviews, their sharpest disagreement dealt with steps the county executive could take to ease the deep financial losses county schools face under the Governor's new Quality Education Act.

The law, enacted in late spring, shifts hundreds of millions in state education aid from the state's wealthiest districts to middle- class and poor districts. Bergen's schools will lose nearly $89 million in state aid from mid-1993 to mid-1996 and are required to pay another $97 million in teachers' pension and Social Security costs, starting next fall. These changes will mean deep cuts in education programs or sharply higher local property taxes, school superintendents say.

Mr. O'Connor testified against the new school-aid formula last spring before it was enacted. Only the Legislature can change it now, he said.

Mr. Schuber, a five-term State Assemblyman who voted against the formula, said: "The next executive has to work with the legislative delegation. It's incumbent to exercise leadership to get a better share for Bergen in school funding. We'll focus public attention on it."

By that, he said, he meant that as next fall's legislative elections approach, he will publicly challenge Bergen's Democrats in the Legislature to either side with the Governor and the new formula and its deep cuts or fight in Trenton for changes benefiting Bergen schools.

Seven of Bergen's 15 state legislators are Democrats and their votes were crucial to the passage of the higher taxes and the revised school-aid formula in June.

Politically, it would be a simple matter for Mr. Schuber, if elected executive, to campaign next year against those Democratic legislators who helped enact the taxes. To do the same, Mr. O'Connor would be forced to break ranks with fellow Democrats and jeopardize both their re-election to the Legislature and the slim majorities the Democrats now hold in the Assembly and Senate.

Mr. O'Connor and Mr. Schuber are vying to succeed Bergen's first Executive, William McDowell, a Republican, who is not seeking re-election. Mr. McDowell quietly guided the county over the last four years through a historic charter change and transition from a weak form of government overseen by a board of freeholders to a stronger, more centralized form run by an executive. Re-Entry to Politics

For Mr. O'Connor, long a power in Bergen's Democratic Party, the campaign is a re-entry to elective politics after a decade's absence. Now 57 years old, he served as a State Senator in 1966 and 1967, a freeholder from 1974 to 1980 and freeholder director from 1975 to 1979. Currently, he is vice chairman of the board of Interchange State Bank, a 12-branch chain with headquarters in Saddle Brook.

Mr. Schuber, a 43-year-old lawyer here, was first elected to the Assembly in 1981. He represents Bergen's 38th District, which includes the central Bergen communities of Bogota, his hometown; Hackensack; Paramus; Lodi, Maywood and Oradell. He was re-elected last year in a blitz of ticket-splitting that overcame a Florio landslide in the 38th District. Although Mr. Florio carried the district by about 13,000 votes, Mr. Schuber won his contest by nearly 5,000 votes.

He is trying to depict Mr. O'Connor as a big spender by saying Mr. O'Connor endorsed Mr. Florio's tax increases and oversaw an increase in county spending to $184 million from $84 million while freeholder director in the late 70's.

Mr. O'Connor cries distortion. On the tax issue, he said he endorsed the idea of raising the income tax for individuals earning more than $100,000 as an equitable way to cut the state budget deficit. As for the county spending record of the late 70's, he said much of the increase came from Federal grants. He argues he held county property tax increases below the inflation rate. 'Not Business as Usual'

"Hard decisions will have to be made," Mr. Schuber said in an interview. "This is not business as usual. People have had it with spending and taxes."

Mr. O'Connor said: "The day of raising taxes is over. We have to keep spending under inflation." Plans on Budget Cuts

Mr. O'Connor said he would cut about $15.5 million from the $320 million county budget -- $9 million through a hiring freeze, reduced overtime and an increase in the work week to 40 hours from 32 hours for mid- and upper-level managers in county departments, $6.2 million through consolidation of departments and cuts in the county's car fleet and $250,000 through cuts in trips and conventions for county officials. In addition, he said, his department heads would be required to cut their budgets for an additional $7 million.

Mr. Schuber has outlined $3.4 million in budget cuts, including about $1.4 million in the county motor pool; $1.2 million in county grants to nonprofit groups; $500,000 in county printing costs, $200,000 in trips by county officials and $150,000 in summer jobs.

Both promised a savingsto property-tax payers from the state's pending takeover of $10 million in county costs for welfare and mental health sites and care.

On the issue of garbage disposal, which affects every county household and property-taxpayer, both opposed construction of the proposed $400 million incinerator in Ridgefield. As an alternative, Mr. Schuber proposed increased recycling and construction of a non-burning, composting operation, similar to one in Dade County, Florida, that pulverizes organic trash into a form of topsoil and metals and other non-organic trash into a gravel-type substance for road beds. Mr. O'Connor proposed more recycling and shipping the remainder to a new incinerator in Newark that is too big for Essex County's volume of garbage.

Photos: Jeremiah F. O'Connor; William P. Schuber (Photographs by Bob Glass for The New York Times) (pg. 8)